“I think Steve is doing a great job, yes,” Vinik said. “I couldn’t be more pleased with the job Steve Yzerman is doing. I think he’s put together the best, or one of the best, staffs in all of hockey. I think they’ve done a great job in drafting and developing young players. I think he’s made a lot of good moves over the years. My general manager has my support 100 percent.”

Vinik goes on to say he feels the team is on the right track to becoming a consistent winner in Tampa. For Yzerman, it has to be encouraging to hear all this.

After seeing the Lightning make the Eastern Conference finals his first year on the job in 2010-2011, they’ve missed the playoffs the last two seasons and had the third-worst record in the league last year finishing with 40 points.

This year’s Lightning team will be very young and still have questions on defense and in goal. If Vinik likes the way things are shaping up, Yzerman’s seat in Tampa should stay cool.

He’s doing exactly what he needs to do to win. Build from the ground up, He’s stocked the farm systems, they now have some of the best prospects in the AHL. They’ve been to the Calder cup finals a couple of years in a row, and are favorite this season.

Teams like Chicago, Pittsburgh, LAK, Boston have made it clear, to be competitive in this league you have to live off prospects develop, and a solid core of players.

Now that Yzerman has developed some very good prospects, all they need now is to lock some of them up for years, and live on draft picks.

lordfletcher - Sep 15, 2013 at 2:27 PM

all of those teams also won with good to great goaltending in those years… Something that Tampa doesn’t have.

mathieug79 - Sep 15, 2013 at 4:32 PM

Yeah because Corey Crawford only became Great this season. Who said anything about this season, they probably have the best Goalies “Not in the NHL” in Andrei Vaselevskyi